


Goodbye, My Danish Sweetheart

by Whitmanesque



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Elsinore is a bust, Fortinbras rules it just Fine and they send him postcards from Greece, M/M, act 3 scene 2, after they execute the whole family, and he's like hun you best learn to rhyme verse better when you speak, and you know ... not a single straight production has acknowledged this after but, anyways they're gay, bc u know for some people eloping just isn't risqué enough, btw horatio is funny as hell, great way to kick off a honeymoon tbh, h e h, hamlet is like they'll give me a whole ass drama troupe, hamlet is trans, shakespeare himself knew it back in 1602, they both are, they're gay and in love ophelia whomst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-16 18:13:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18526924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whitmanesque/pseuds/Whitmanesque
Summary: Time was running out. This, above all things, they both knew.(Act 3, Scene 2 in its most blatant interpretation where Hamlet is asking Horatio to run away with him and become an actor, i.e. he proposes to the man he's in love with.)





	Goodbye, My Danish Sweetheart

**Author's Note:**

> “Cause there's nobody better than you,” --Mitski

 

He’s surprised the relief he feels each time he’s alone with Horatio isn’t more palpable. He’d been running from everyone, lately. Since going back to Denmark there’d been no small affordance of grief. The looming disgust at his mother and uncle permeated every room, every crevice of his bones, sinking deep under binders and flesh, staining his blood. This horror followed him wherever he went, and he couldn’t wash it off, no matter how hard he scrubbed at his pink, peeling skin each morning.

Horatio’s eyes were on him. It seemed they always were filled with the extraordinary capacity to show concern, worried even when Hamlet didn’t know why.

He glanced over, as though to ask _What’s going on, what’s our next move?_

Time was running out. This, above all things, they both knew. At night when Horatio held him, bracketing his legs around his waist, hushing him like a small, needy child, Hamlet cried until his voice was a rusted nail, a poisoned-tipped lance. Why did you even follow me, he would croak out in between sobs, and what’re we to do now? But Horatio didn’t offer strategy then. No, at three in the morning he was all frail, warm touches tethering him to sanity. My lord, he would whisper across his temple, into his hairline, I would follow you to the depths of the Gudena. I would wear your armor and come back with Hector’s spear sticking out of my chest if you needed it to be so. I would take your place in Greece and wait to be executed without ever knowing you’d truly return or not. I would.

Last night Hamlet had watched the sun rip through their shades again, harsh as a dagger. He all but crawled under the bed and went back to sleep.

We’re becoming vampires, he thought sullenly, picking at the scab on his wrist. It was one of many that trailed along his arms. Except everyone else feeds on us and screams that we’re the monsters.

He sat next to Horatio, tentative and nervous until the other reached a hand out, placing it soothingly on his shoulder.

The slight thread connecting them, a miracle in itself.

“Why, let the stricken deer go weep, the hart ungalled play,” he began, voice shaking. “For some must watch while some must sleep. So runs the world away.”

Horatio inhaled sharply. His expression changed to sorrow, then rage, then stark resignation.

He must be so tired of hearing how I wish to die, Hamlet thought for a moment, though he knew that wasn’t quite true. Horatio was no stranger to the depressing reality they were in, if anything, he might be the first person who understood. All his talk of philosophy, his knowledge of ancient tragedies … No, he knew far too well.

But that’s not what the conversation is about. At least, not this time.

He had been running around since early this morning, caught between the merciless teeth of his uncle and his mother, tired of them both. He had walked through the castle feeling as though his skin might disintegrate into ash it crawled so fiercely. He had seen Horatio, once so alive and worldly at Wittenberg, standing in their bedroom brittle and muted as a marble statue.

Enough, he had thought then, I won’t let him die here. Not like this.

“Would not this, sir, and a forest of feather--” he tried again, finding his throat constricting suddenly. “If the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me--”

He watched the weight of his words settle on Horatio’s nimble shoulders; _What if I ran off and became an actor. What if you came with me?_

Horatio turned; a furrowed brow, a look of shock across his usually demure features.

Only Hamlet didn’t stop there. He slid from the seat he was on and got down on one knee. He grasped his hand, brushing his lips against the other boy’s slender knuckles, before bringing his palm to his cheek.

“... with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players?”

Will you have me, he asked, you most beloved and best of men.  _Philtatos_.

If anyone had seen them, they wouldn’t have recognized the two somber boys near the brink of destruction. They would see only this; a lover kneeling before the one they couldn’t bare to be parted from in life or death. They would see the boy reach for his other hand and bring it up to his own cheek, gathering him to his chest, drawing him nearer, nearer until you couldn’t tell where they were seperated from to begin with. A flush of aweswept, quiet worship. An apotheosis in the only arms he ever belonged in.

Horatio was a man of many words and most of them, if not all, were of the written persuasion.

Yes, he nodded fervently, meaning yes, _yes_ I’ll go with you. Tears streamed down his flushed cheeks. He knew there would be no ring, no traditions of any kind he had always found so stifling. But there would be Hamlet at the end of each day, flowers in his shoes and a soliloquy bright as marigolds bursting off his tongue.

His trembling fingers moved to caress Hamlet’s cheek, tracing his parted lips stricken with an adoring smile, before pulling him in for a kiss.

Oh, thought Hamlet, all but lost to the hands woven in his hair, the insistent, searching tongue which prodded between his teeth, taking him apart, threatening to devour him whole.

And I’d let him, he knew, had always known somewhere in the back of his mind since their first disastrous meeting in Wittenberg. I’d let him do whatever he wanted to me, so long as he held me like this each night.

“Half a share,” Horatio suggested, teasingly, tenderly, when they finally broke apart.

Half a-- _Oh!_ Hamlet wrinkled his nose, heat still buzzing on his lips. He laughed, breathless.

“A whole one. For thou dost know, _O_ _Damon dear_ ,” he said assuredly, his own voice foreign, playful and coy for the first time since having come to Elsinore. “This realm dismantled was of Jove himself. And now reigns here, a very, _very_ \--pajock.”

He noted the way Horatio flushed at the sobriquet, the softness set ablaze in his eyes that was only reserved for him. He’d found that no easy task years ago. He would seldom have to do no less than pry his reserved nature away like a smooth stone in high tide. But each time, he found it. Again and again. He wanted to chase that look forever.

Yes, they would be fine. So long to Denmark. Together, they would escape its wrath.

“You might have at least rhymed,” Horatio retorted, ever the logician, feverishly kissing him once more. Kisses that tasted of honeysuckle and earth after the rain.

Intertwined and unslaked, their future gleamed indefinite behind Hamlet’s eyelids, spilling out gentle as moonlight.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you leave comments or kudos I'd really appreciate that. @victorian-twink
> 
> Oh, and look up Damon and Pythias if you get a chance because the nickname is sweet af and the story behind it--Well, Shakespeare sure knew they were gay :')


End file.
